“Grecale is returning fire.” The lookout was trying to keep his voice under control, but the tinge of sheer, blind panic was already working his way into the reports. “She’s lit up, sir.”
The Italian destroyer was starkly visible in the black of the night, standing out in the white tracks across the water created by the British searchlights. Whoever was operating them was a master of his craft. The searchlights would flick on for a few seconds. Just long enough for the starshell crews to drop their rounds around her and then the searchlights would go off. Once they did so, the battleship seemed to vanish into the night again.
It was Grecale’s turn again. She was already burning. That was her doom; the fires made an excellent point of aim for the British gunners. Grimly, Casardi realized that was the one hope the merchant ships, already turning away from the attack, would have. The first ships to get hit will attract all the fire. That buys time for the rest. There is a sacrifice that has to be made.
“Searchlights on. Bearing oh-nine-oh.”
Casardi had made a quick guess at the position of the British cruisers and destroyers. He wanted his lights on to try and fix a target while he still had the guns to engage them. More importantly, he had to draw the British fire away from the merchantmen.
Bartolomeo Colleoni’s searchlights snapped on, but the sea they illuminated was empty. To some extent, they achieved their purpose, though. For around him, he saw the orange flare of British guns. Eight guns per ship. Does that mean they are eight-inch Counties or sixinch Leanders? And does it matter? My Colleoniwas designed to fight French destroyers, not British cruisers. Our armor won’t keep out either shell. That was when the world got very bright. Casardi realized what the British were up to. The battleship is using her searchlights to illuminate targets and her armor to absorb any fire we can throw at her when she gives her position away by doing so. Meanwhile, the cruisers and destroyers stay in the darkness to fire on us.
He felt Colleoni lurch under his feet. Her guns fired on the muzzle flashes of the British cruisers. She took a deeper and much more serious roll; a pattern of sixinch shells smacked into her amidships. He felt his cruiser dying. The vibration from the engines and the movement of the ship slackened as the hits took out her engine rooms.
“Keep firing under local control.”
There was another brilliant flash from off to port. For a horrible moment, Casardi thought another British battleship had joined the fight. Then he realized that it was the Bande Nere. She’d been torpedoed. The explosion had torn the hull, one optimized for speed, not strength, in two. It was barely five minutes into the action. Already, all three Italian cruisers were crippled or dying.
This was what every cruiser captain lived for. Captain John Augustine Collins watched the eight sixinch guns on his cruiser hammer the Italian ship trapped in the glare of Warspite’s searchlights. He’d fired three half-broadsides, patterns of four shells in quick sequence, that laddered the target and got the guns ranged in. Now he was pouring full eight-gun broadsides into the cruiser’s hull. She was already burning and slowing notably. As she did, the ripples of hits along her hull seemed to grow in intensity, outlining her hull with orange fire. The Italians always made much of the speed of their cruisers, he thought. The day they make one that’s faster than a shell, I’ll believe they have a good idea.
“Is that Eye-tie trying to commit suicide?” Collin’s executive officer seemed bemused by the spectacle.
“He’s drawing our fire. Very well, too. Buying time for the convoy to scatter and escape. A brave man is dying over there, Billy.”
His comment was interrupted by the splash of shell patterns all around him. Sydney’s crew were well-rehearsed. The shooter was illuminated by her searchlights before she could get a second salvo out. Sydney’s four-inch guns fired almost as quickly and with deadly accuracy. Two brilliant red flashes lit up the destroyer’s stern, tearing into the two twin mounts there and starting the dull red glow of fire.
“Cease firing; that’s Mohawk!” Collins had recognized the big destroyer with her eight guns almost as soon as she had been illuminated.
“And get those lights off her.”
It was too late. In the brief seconds Mohawk had been illuminated, an Italian destroyer seized the opportunity to fire her torpedoes. One hit Mohawk directly under the forward gun mounts; the second in the aft machinery spaces.
Columns of water blew skywards, enveloping the ship. Mohawk was finished. Collins knew that; no destroyer built could take two well-placed torpedoes. She was already coming to a halt and settling fast; her crew going over the side in a hurried ‘abandon ship’.
Collins swung his attention back to the light cruiser being hammered by his sixinch guns. She was already silenced and listing rapidly; a floating wreck being left behind as the Commonwealth ships pushed through the Italian screen to the merchant ships beyond. The flares of the sixinch shells hitting her were suddenly swamped by a series of massive explosions, as Warspite brought her 15-inch guns to bear. Then those blasts too were dwarfed; the Italian cruiser’s magazines exploded.
“We can worry about picking up survivors later.”
Nubian and Mohawk had been flotilla mates for a long time, and the crews of the big Tribal class destroyers tended to stick closely together. Leaving the crew of Mohawk behind came hard. Commander Mason tore his eyes away from the sinking wreck of Nubian’s sister-ship and stared into the darkness. The brilliant displays of starshell and searchlights, combined with the angry glare of shells and heavy gunfire, had effectively destroyed his night vision. Even so, the patch of darkness ahead of him seemed a bit more solid than the rest. When the darkness resolved itself into the shape of an Italian destroyer, Mason realized what had happened.
The destroyer saw Mohawk illuminated and fired her torpedoes. Then, she sheered away in an effort to clear the launch point. A sound and sensible maneuver. She couldn’t turn one way because that would bring her into Sydney’s arc of fire so she went the other and that put her right across my bows.
“Stand by for collision. Brace for impact!” Mason only just managed to get the order out. Nubian slammed into the center-section of the Italian destroyer, just aft of the single funnel. For a brief second, Mason saw the letters FG painted on the destroyer’s bows, identifying her as the Folgore. Then the sight was masked out as Nubian’s bows rose over the Italian ship.
Folgore seemed to be writhing under the impact, reminding Mason of a snake being crushed under a boot. Then Nubian slammed down; the Italian destroyer’s back snapped under the stress. Nubian’s momentum carried her forward, completing the job of cutting Folgore in half. Folgore’s own momentum carried her onwards, twisting Nubian’s bows to one side. There was a scream of tortured steel as Nubian’s bows detached. Then silence. Both destroyers were dead in the water. Folgore was already sinking fast. The crew aboard the larger and more toughly-built Nubian swarmed into the ruined bows, trying to reinforce shattered bulkheads and staunch the floods pouring in through the riven forward hull.